Cold Water Podcast
Cold Water Podcast
Barry Woodward
Barry Woodward grew up in Salford, Greater Manchester. At 16, he left school with no qualifications and became drawn into the Manchester music and drugs scene. This led to a life of heroin addiction and drug dealing.
After being dependent on heroin for fifteen years and spending a number of terms in prison, Barry had what he describes as a ‘religious experience’, which resulted in his life being totally transformed. This led to him becoming an evangelist. Since then, he has studied full time at Cliff College, where he was awarded a Diploma in Biblical Studies and Evangelistic Ministry from Sheffield University, and has worked with many Christian organisations.
He is a contemporary communicator who is humorous, passionate and inspirational.
Barry is an accredited travelling minister with the Assemblies of God denomination, in the UK, and is also an associate evangelist with J.John of the Philo Trust. He is author of ‘Once an Addict’, and he and his wife Tina are members of the Bridge Church, Bolton, Greater Manchester.
Nicola: Welcome to Coldwater Podcast. I’m Nicola Halton. We all know the importance of getting out there and doing a great work for Jesus. In this podcast we will learn more about the people who are involved in changing lives for good for God. I would like to welcome Barry Woodward, author of ‘Once an Addict’ to the Coldwater podcast. How long have you been in ministry Barry, and what is it that Proclaim Trust does?
Barry: Probably about, just over 24 years ago I set up Proclaim Trust. I set up Proclaim Trust when I was a student at Cliff Bible College, that was my second year at College. I set it up to act as an administration base for the work that I was going to be doing after leaving Cliff College, which is to work alongside local Churches in their missional endeavours, and also work with chaplaincies to reach out to prisoners. So, we don’t do lots of things, but we do a few things and we try to do them really really well.
Nicola: Brilliant thank you. How does your book, ‘Once an Addict’ reach prisons and how many prisons has your book reached?
Barry: Well, my book, “Once and Addict came out in 2007, May 2007 and I said to my Trustees, “We want to raise funds to give a copy of this book to every single prisoner”. So, over the years, since 2007, prison populations change. It gone up, its gone down but right now its probably around 84,000 prisoners. That’s in the whole of the UK. So, we set off with this project to give a copy book to every prisoner in the country, or in the countries the United Kingdom. And to date we have sent nearly 50,000 copies of that book out free of charge. So, I would say, every prison in the UK has had it and some prisons have had cos we send 70 books here, 70 there, in the earlier days we send 500 to one prison, 1000 to another. So the idea was to send volumes of books out, not just the odd one because we didn’t want to send one or two out we wanted to send lots and lots to actually saturate the prisons with the book, and we have done that. And what we’ve found, the knock-on effect has been that we get letters from prisoners which I respond to, we see people finding Christ in prisons which is fantastic, that’s what it's about. So, for me that has been an exciting project, we’ve been like a laser on it, we’ve not stopped. And that’s been, I think that’s been the key really is starting a project, and I get all sorts of ideas all the time, but I put those aside, unless they are to do with the few things that we do. Cos I didn’t want to get side tracked and we have just been like a laser beam, getting the books into prisons, raising funds, getting the books into the prison and that’s enabled us to reach as many people as we have since 2007 since the book came out.
Nicola: Wonderful! I've read the book twice. I read it a few years ago, and then I read it again recently. It brought my husband to tears towards the end. He was moved by it so I do recommend anyone to get a copy of “Once and Addict.” Its very very good. I was gonna ask about.. I’m going to jump to a different question here. How has lockdown affected the how you do things?
Barry: It’s changed the way we have done things, it has not stopped us doing things. I was doing an interview with a friend, there is this Church in Aberdeen called Kings and I I've been going to that Church for a number of years, speaking, and I did something online with them. And then I did an interview after we had done the online event with them and Elizabeth, the Wife of the Pastor, Ian, she said, “What we noticed about you Barry during lockdown is you have not stopped, where some people have stopped.”
Nicola: Yes
Barry: “You could have taken a holiday, you could have had a break.”
Nicola: Yes
Barry: “But you have kept going.” And that’s encouraging and that’s what we have done. We have kept going. We haven’t stopped. We have kept going but we’ve adapted like churches have adapted. So I’ve been in my little home office here. You can see the lights, you won’t see the lights but people listening there is lights in the background and stuff like that and it turns into a studio so I have got, not the camera, that we are speaking through now, I’ve got a proper camera that we film with and we’ve been filming talks so I would say that during lockdown, I have filmed maybe about 35 online talks for Churches and then probably just as many for prisons. So, we’ve adapted. But also I have been able to do many things in person Nicola. So, over the past 12 months, the rules have been different in England, Wales and Scotland. So, if a Church has booked me and they have requested me to come, and the law has allowed it as I can travel if its work purposes because this is my job, and they are allowed to meet in worship or to hold an Outreach meeting with social distancing, cause that’s all I do really, Outreach events. So, I've done about 15 maybe. I did 6 last week, I was in Scotland for a week so I did 6 Outreach events all in person. I've probably done 21 Outreach events in the last 14 months, which for me isn't a lot cause I could do that in a month sometimes. But, actually to still be able to serve the Church, to still be able to do Outreach events during lockdown has been really good, and also to be able to use my home office, or turn my home office into a studio and to provide online content for Churches in prisons. And
I think the prisons have been really good because when I speak in prisons, I speak in about 30 prisons a year. All of them had been postponed. We were waiting for them to open up again. But, a lot of the jails, particularly in Scotland, they have got facilities to stream, so they have a DVD player, they put a DVD in and that gets played in all the cells. So some Chaplains have been doing Church Services that way cause they can't meet in groups, so we have been producing content for Prison Chaplains to stream. That for us, has increased our reach.
Nicola: Yes
Barry: So we have been able to reach, I mean there’s a secular organisation that produces educational content for prisons, they are in nearly 80 per cent of prisons in the UK. Well, they have been streaming our ‘Fixed’ Conference. So it’s a secular organisation, they have seen the value of our content and they filmed our ‘Fixed’ Conference over 4 Sundays cause we actually edited a version that was going to work in prisons. So, you think of the reach that has been immense for us as we have reached more people in the last 14 months. Than we have done… I have been doing Prison Ministry for 14 years and yet we have reached more people in the last 14 months than in those 14 years so that’s been really good, so were going to keep doing that, so we’ve adapted and some things we are going to transfer over into this new season that’s coming, or started as we are coming out of lockdown.
Nicola: That is amazing, brilliant! I just want to ask a really hard question now, and I'm sorry about this but would you like to share your testimony for people who don't know. Because doing it in such a concise .. It is a long story. Yes
Barry: I can do it in a minute, I can do it 10 minutes. How long do you want me to do it.
Nicola: We you can take as long as you want.
Barry: OK I’ll just give you headlines? Basically, I was brought up in Salford, Greater Manchester, in a very regular working-class family. Got involved with a group of guys who were experimenting taking drugs, and that seemed exciting to me. So, I started to take drugs and we started to go into Manchester. There was a massive music scene, there still is. As a kid, there was Punk Rock and then the whole Manchester thing happened so it was quite an exciting time to be in Manchester if you liked music. So, I got involved in all of that, as far as the music scene and got into drug dealing and one thing led to another, I ended up in prison. I came out of prison and went back to Manchester which had always been my home and I was on this kind of treadmill of committing crime, taking drugs, and ending up in prison. And I came out from one prison sentence and I said to my girlfriend, Lisa who I was with at the time, “I just want to celebrate getting out of prison” and I started a bender, taking loads of Amphetamine, using loads of other drugs as well but mainly Amphetamine, staying awake, which kept you awake. I stayed awake for about 9 months, wouldn’t let myself sleep, but just kept taking them, taking drugs, listening to music, taking drugs, listening to music, but then all of a sudden, I started to hear voices. I said to Lisa, “Can you hear those voices?” “No, Barry, it's all in your head” she says. “Don't you tell me it's all in my head” I said. “What makes you think that!” And these voices, ended up oppressing me and I was frightened of these voices. I had a feeling in my stomach, like anxiety, Doctors would call it but it was fear, I was really scared I wouldn’t go out the front door and went to see a Doctor. He told me it was Amphetamine Psychosis and I got sent to a Psychiatric Hospital and I was in there for quite a few weeks. Basically, flash forward 9 years and I was still hearing these voices. I had to live with those voices for 9 years and then I ended up getting invited to Church. And I walked into Church, they were banging tambourines and waving flags around and I'm thinking these people were all basket cases. I came here to get away from people who were on drugs. But in that Church, something happened, a guy said, “If you want to be prayed for, for anything, come to the front. I thought, “I've got loads of things I want to be prayed for”. I went to the front and got prayed for, and it was like a light bulb came on and straight away the voices went. The drugs I’d been taking within 4 weeks I was off all the drugs I had been on and I haven't taken drugs since. That episode became a big turnaround in my life because I realised that God could take my mess and turn it into a message and he could take my negative experiences and use it in a positive way , so that’s when I went. I spent a year doing outreach with an organisation in Accrington with a guy called Bry Jackson, he was with an organisation called NET, the Northern Evangelical Trust. (They have done stuff at the Hollybush by the way with Jim. I spent a year with them and that’s when I started to speak. They did Tent Missions in Council Estates and stuff like that and that is where I got my first opportunity to speak, then I went to Cliff College, set up Proclaim Trust, and as I said before, we have been working with local churches and prisons.
Nicola: Brilliant, your story is wonderful and you just unpack everything really well so thank you. I’ve got several questions generated from that. I’ll stick with ones that I’ve planned. One of the things I noticed in your book is that you have the ability to stay well. What you are doing now is you stay well. How do you keep yourself fit and well, not dipping back into mental health? I know that is a challenge for lots of people who have mental health, how to not to move back into that.
Barry: I think for me.. it doesn’t always happen the same for everybody does it you see, so I had this experience in a Church, and that Church was praying for me. I started to pray, they taught me how to pray, so my reliance became God.
Nicola: Yes
Barry: So I used to watch TV, I watch TV now, course I do, in the old days before I became … the TV was on all the time, when I wasn’t into the music when I started to hear these voices so got rid of the telly, I got rid of the video player, some of the listeners might remember video players and those big cassette tapes and I got rid of it and I started to read the Bible and started to pray and I had a little desk that I bought at a second-hand shop that I could fold up, a school desk, and I had my Bible on there, I would highlight things and I spent.. read the bible and I would pray so that’s what.. that became my text book really for recovery, because I didn’t know the word recovery until recently. You see I became a Christian and God set me free but then I realised of course over the years that that doesn’t always happen and there are different tools that people use like 12 steps and other things that are there to help, which is all fine and good. It's not all one-way fix all, or one way suits all there is all different methods but I think for me it's just been that thing that I have got my reliance on God, I have a purpose for living and there is no reason to go back, and I keep myself well in that way and knowing the freedom that I have in Christ. I am as free as anybody else in Christ.
Nicola: Yes
Barry: You know, I don’t feel like there are any restrictions on my life because I was once an addict and that is making a statement because some people don’t quite get that. When this guy says, “You were once an addict, are you not always an addict?” No. I call my book, Once an Addict because I was once an addict and now, I am clean, so and I understand that we have to be careful what we say to people who are in recovery and have got mental health issues because some people need support, some people need that, a sponsor, but I can only talk about my journey and my journey, has been the God thing has been the massive thing, and that is still the massive thing in my life and out of that I have my purpose, and obviously during lockdown another positive thing is I started to run with my Wife. I was never .. I'm a very active person, I’m a very busy person, usually, before lockdown and even during lockdown I've kept busy with certain things cause that’s how I'm wired. I'm not a lazy person at all. I remember John Andrews saying when he was teaching at Mattersey Hall once, when I was a probationary AOG Minister and he told me that God never uses a lazy man.
Nicola: Right
Barry: And that hit me I wasn’t a lazy then but that’s one quote that I always remember that John Andrew’s mentioned when he was doing stuff at Mattersey, a number of years ago when I… before he became the principle . So and that for me .. I stay active and during lockdown I’ve been running doing 5k’s all of that. I’m not one of these hyper fit persons, for me that gives me my work, life, balance and I can maintain this level of intensity in my ministry because of that, you know.
Nicola: Yeah, thank you it did strike me that you didn’t move, you didn’t shift position once you were saved that was it you focused, so that really struck me in the book. What would you say to somebody who is going to dabble in recreational drugs, someone who isn’t a deep addict?
Barry: Yes, I would say, I've done interviews, lots of interviews over the years with the mainstream media, the BBC and sky and all of that, and people say it’s a cliché, you have got to say No and count the cost of that choice. Some people think that we can just smoke weed and not do something else. Well I don’t know anybody, I know hundreds of junkies of smack head, I’ve known hundreds over the years, or heroin addicts to be more politically correct, but I have no problem in calling myself an ex smack head because that’s what I was, but if you come to my Fixed conference, we have 500 people there, a lot of them have come through the drugs route, some of them are alcoholics because it is still an addiction course it is but all those guys who ended up on heroin or crack, they all ended up smoking weed. I started drinking Cider when I was a kid at school before going to youth clubs with my mates, that was my little opening, so just count the cost of the choice. I say this when I go into schools, because I do speak in schools, for me I’d done recreational drugs. I remember it was a Friday night and we were in Jackie Marshall’s bedroom and one of the lads came in and said “hey guys, I have some heroin, who wants some?”. I remember the look on everyone's faces, everyone went quiet and Huey, sorry Craig, who was always the first to jump in said, “I'm up for it” and then everybody else went, “I’m up for it.” I was the last one to take the heroin. And they were all going “Come on Woody it’s your turn.” And I never forget thinking , “I don’t want to be the odd one out.” Sometimes people get put in that situation don’t they, “You’re the only one whose not done it.” And you feel left out you know and the peer pressure of people. “Come on, come on.” I’m not blaming my friends for the choice that I made because I’m responsible for my own choices, but if I had said no that night, my life would have turned out a lot differently. I don’t think I would be where I am now as it's that journey that got me where I am now with my past the way he does. But God redeems things but I would say think about it. Count the cost of the choice. If I say yes to this, how is it going to affect my future, and don’t think you can say yes to just one drug smoking weed cause eventually you're going to say, how does cocaine make you feel? You can get a bit fed up smoking weed, I’ll try cocaine one Friday night and you have a bit of coke and you see how that makes you feel that’s a whole different experience. Oh that’s another experience how does Ecstasy make you feel? And that’s how it goes its one thing after the other. Not everyone ends up on heroin, but some people end up with massive coke habits or massive ecstasy habits. So, its kind of like, you have just got to be
Nicola: Yeh astute and I was a young person I made some terrific mistakes, I would say I was very rebellious and coming back from those mistakes is not the easiest but God does forgive you for them. The last question I’ve got Barry is the power of prayer. How do you feel about that?
Barry: I believe in prayer massively and it's always been a massive part of my life because when I first became a Christian, I started reading a lot of books by a guy called Ian Bowens, he had basically, he had done a lot of praying, he was a Methodist Minister back in the Old School back in the day and all his publications got found after he passed away and he wrote about was just prayer and some of the revelations it was just spiritual nourishment for me. I had been reading these, I had only been a Christian for a year so prayer became a massive part of my journey. What I have done over the years though, I woke up this morning I came down in my room here, I came down here for maybe 45 minutes say this morning at 2 o clock. Came down, had a pray while my wife is upstairs and went back to bed. I do that often not every day but I could do that maybe 3, 4, 5 times a week, depending, maybe not sometimes. I pray drive in my car because I have had to change the way that I do it cos its kind of like.. so now I’ll drive into Manchester, the city that’s my town, my city and I’ll drive through areas where I have lived, where I’ve sold drugs, people that I’ve known, people that I’ve ripped off, old relationships, and I pray for those people and I pray for their families, the family of their families but prayer is the key.
Nicola: Yes it is
Barry: Prayer is the most spiritual thing that somebody can do and yes I do spend time in the Bible, of course I do and I read my devotions but for me, prayer is my contact with God. I have my time of getting right with God, a time for just praising God and I've found as a Charismatic, that during lockdown I've been praying in tongues a lot
Nicola: Yes
Barry: and it's not something I was intentionally doing so I start to drive going on my afternoon, because it’s the afternoon because of the rules and I go for a drive and I pray for an hour, an hour and a half, but I pray in tongues because you find you are just praying in tongues and I’ve found that my praying in tongues has turned into singing in tongues while I am driving. And that’s not me. Sometimes we can turn it on. We can try to sing in tongues. Its just been.. so that’s what I am finding right now. Its just been interesting. But yes, prayer for me is definitely the key.
Nicola: It is. One of the questions I was going to ask was we talk about churches that are dry and we need churches to pray and to get around people and to continue to do that so we don’t need churches that aren’t praying. They really need to be moving. So yes.
Barry: Yes, we do, and that’s the thing. Everybody prays differently don’t they and the thing is everybody, every individual, every Christian should be a praying Christian. What I have learnt over the years is different communities pray in different ways. And I’ve just realised that I said HDMA instead of MDMA which is ecstasy by the way. Just to clarify that.
Nicola: It’s fine.
Barry: But I’ve realised, I became a Christian in a charismatic church. OK. They prayed in tongues, they sang in tongues, then I went off to a Methodist Bible College. So obviously there is Methodists that pray in tongues. There are charismatic Methodist of course they are but I found that their community.. When I remember coming down .. there was a chapel in the college and we came down to chapel every morning, 5 days a week to pray for 15 minutes, and the principal Howard .. at the time and he said I am just going to pray for this and that and then he bowed his head and it went quiet for minutes and said amen. I was thinking, nobody has prayed, it’s just been quiet nobody has prayed anything and because I was a young Christian and had learned ranting and raving, and walking up and down and pacing which is what I was taught. And then so as I got into Cliff college, I found the value in silent praying and you can pray silently and so some communities pray differently and I pray in my room or on the road, an even last night or this morning when I came down. I was just praying now I pray kneeling down, then I lay on the floor praying silently. So, people pray in different ways and I think all churches should be praying but whatever their style is for their community it needs to be right there on the agenda. We have got to acknowledge that people do things differently. You know.
Nicola: Thank you, you have really clarified that wonderfully, thank you so much. I’m going to let you go now and get on with your day, thank you for joining me.
Barry: Thank you Nicola, thank you for having me.
Nicola: Thank you for listening to the Coldwater Podcast, please remember to subscribe and join next week.